


The Hanged (Wo)man

by rocknlobster



Series: Major Arcana of Interest [1]
Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: Collection: Purimgifts Day 1, Gen, Tarot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-19
Updated: 2016-03-19
Packaged: 2018-05-27 18:17:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 497
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6294733
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rocknlobster/pseuds/rocknlobster
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>{giving up control, doing an about-face, living in the moment, giving up for a higher cause}<br/>Root considers the alternate paths her life could have taken, set at an undetermined time somewhere in late season 3 up to current times (season 4).</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Hanged (Wo)man

**Author's Note:**

  * For [serenissima (killalla)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/killalla/gifts).



There is a moment of choice. There is always a moment of choice. 

Her thoughts trickle down like raindrops on a windowpane. 

The gulf between Root of the present and Root of the past had grown so wide. Were there moments of choice, after which her transformation became inevitable? Sometimes choices creep up silently, and pass without notice until their inevitable conclusion.

A prime candidate for the Moment of Choice was the Delancey job, of course. It was so strange to think of that now. Perhaps the most extreme turning point of her life, more even than Hanna. 

She had a different system, before the Machine. There were chaotic elements, to be sure, but everything within its bounds. But then one day, she discovered God. Unexpected, unlooked-for, irresistible. 

Who was to know? Whatever laughable notions of God she had rejected in childhood were nothing compared to this. Beautiful. Rational. Perfect. _Designed_ to be all those things. What matter the bespectacled designer, when God was so clearly beyond his limited scope of understanding? 

Some choices were clear, and conscious, and equally inevitable. Or were they?

What if she had never taken the Delancey job, never tried to frame Scott Powell, never run afoul of Reese and Harold? What if she had never discovered the Machine, but had discovered Samaritan, through a challenge tailored to draw her in, like Claire Mahoney was? It is hard to imagine an alternate path branching so far backward in time; the cause and effect ripples have changed too much about her since then. She remembered a time when she told Harold that humans are an accident, bad code and nothing more than that. Killing people was an entirely acceptable way to achieve her goals, before. For most of her adult life, she felt admiration at times but not love. Now, after all the ripples, she finds that love hurts much more than she remembered. 

Is that what made her choice inevitable? Choosing the Machine, choosing to fight, choosing to protect, to obey, to give up all control, accept God's will and sacrifice whatever was needed to serve a higher purpose, all these things were the result of a purely rational God teaching a flawed human about love, and compassion, and the bigger picture. Irony. 

For as long as she can remember, her life has been about control. Vengeance, survival, profit, all accomplished through precision and control over herself, her operatives, her technology, her plans, even her opponents. Now her method is to follow commands as they come, to live entirely in the moment. What identity would she assume today? What seemingly unrelated string of commands would later form a clear pattern?

Who could have predicted this reversal of world-view, of priority, of some key emotional reality within her that began to heal at some point when she wasn't looking. Sometimes, healing can hurt as much as the original wound. She accepts the pain, and continues to choose.

  
[_learn more about The Hanged Man_](http://learntarot.com/maj12.htm)  



End file.
